In sub-Saharan Africa only one in five children has basic writing and numeracy skills. The cost of children not being educated in low-income countries is estimated to be approximately $2 trillion by 2050. Without a change in the direction of funding for education programs, by 2030, 600 billion children worldwide they will have a basic education.
Here because “Education in Africa cannot wait!” – education in Africa can't wait – launches $1 billion project for promote access to education and higher training. Here in Italy the engine of the initiative is the Social Impact Agenda (Sia) who presented the Africa operation to the Senate.
The tool to achieve the training objectives is theEducation Outcomes Fund for Africa and the Middle East (Eof), the one-billion-dollar fund promoted by the Education Commission of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and by the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG), the global network of social impact investments.
Why a fund? There are more than one reason. The idea behind the impact finance movement is to change the perspective of markets and the economy in general, by incorporating social and environmental impact into business models and financial instruments. Leading this new path for finance is the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG), an international association that promotes social impact investment in markets around the world, bringing together 21 countries and the institutions of the European Union.
Il Gsg adopts the most effective tools to achieve the objectives, one above all the enhancement of Payment by Result (PbR) models. The idea is to link financial returns to interventions and models that produce positive and measurable social outcomes in theaccess to education and higher training. When we speak of an outcome fund, in fact, we mean a fund that brings together various loans to commission several social interventions in parallel, on the basis of agreed social results and the fund remunerates the investments only if the social objectives are achieved.
“We need a revolution of financial capitalism. These outcome fund projects should reverse finance, based on the social objectives to be achieved", thus opened the proceedings the president of Social Impact Agenda for Italy, Giovanna Melandri.
She then intervened to explain the initiative Amel Karboul, CEO of the Education Outcomes Funds for Africa and the Middle East and former Minister in the first democratic government of Tunisia.
The Outcome Fund constitutes a public-private partnership model based on the Pay by Result scheme, which involves donors, investors, civil society organizations, development agencies and governments for strategic and shared programming on the achievement of a specific social objective, linked to the return on capital.
“This billion-dollar fund is the first major attempt to use impact finance tools to accelerate the achievement of Goal 4 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. For the first time the platform of thought and the tools of impact finance meet the platform of the UN Goals”, explained Melandri. “Social Impact Agenda has also recorded an important success in Italy, obtaining that the first Fund for social innovation was enshrined in the last Stability Law, in order to disburse public resources and return the invested capital where these investments were explicitly linked to social objectives to achieve,” he concluded.
Involved in the project are also Eni, the Compagnia di San Paolo and Enel. The president of Enel Patricia Grieco, he recalled that the electricity group is “at the forefront of promoting the electrification and development of the African continent, where we are the main operator of renewables. In our vision, local communities, companies, customers and all stakeholders belong to the same ecosystem and share the same goal of sustainable growth. For this reason, we have combined ethical, social and environmental objectives with corporate ones, incorporating sustainability throughout the value chain".
"I am pleased to represent the experience of the Fund for the fight against child educational poverty in this important discussion with Amel Karboul", finally declared the president of the Foundation WITH THE SOUTH, Carlo Borgomeo, "In profoundly different conditions, even in Italy it is evident that investing in the education of minors is the premise for every possible development hypothesis, and that the missed opportunities for children are the root of growing inequalities".
